# James Orr > [!info] Stub > Minimal-viable page created to resolve a wikilink. Expand with biography, Edmund Burke Foundation role, and the full Cambridge/Reform UK record. British theologian and Associate Professor of Philosophy of Religion in the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge (appointed 2019), and since September 2025 Head of Policy for [[Reform UK]]. Chairs the UK branch of the [[Edmund Burke Foundation]] and is a director of the Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation. Described by the *Telegraph* as [[Nigel Farage]]'s "kingmaker" and by [[JD Vance]] as his "British Sherpa." Orr is the principal transatlantic linkman between the American [[National Conservatism]] / [[Dark Enlightenment]] networks and the British right. A July 2026 *Byline Times* investigation reported that his 2019 Cambridge appointment coincided with an anonymous five-figure donation to the university routed from Thiel Capital through the US fundraising vehicle Cambridge in America, that he hosted [[Peter Thiel]]'s private January 2026 "Antichrist Lectures" at St Catharine's College, and that he has used his Cambridge position — including housing postgraduate students at his riverside property, which he calls a "right-wing Mecca" and "Conservative Kibbutz" — as a recruitment pipeline into Reform UK. Cambridge University declined to answer the paper's questions; Orr's lawyers threatened to injunct publication. ## See Also - [[Peter Thiel]] - [[Reform UK]] - [[Edmund Burke Foundation]] - [[Dark Enlightenment]] - [[National Conservatism]]